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Monday, February 22, 2010

Ideas for Adapting Pastry Recipes

* The reason most pastry made with wheat flour is tricky is that the wheat contains gluten, which makes it stretchy. This is good for bread - it stretches into pockets to hold expanding gases from the leaveners and makes a light, moist loaf. This is not good for pastry, which gets tough when the gluten gets stretched. In fact, special “cake and pastry flour” is made with low-gluten wheat flour. Pastry made with gluten-free flour doesn’t get tough as easily as wheat pastry. It is harder to overwork the dough with mixing or kneading.

* Still, it is possible to make tough pastry with gluten-free flours. I’ve noticed the following errors can toughen the dough:

Working with dough that is too warm. Use chilled ingredients to mix the dough, then refrigerate it for at least an hour before rolling.

Using recipes that skimp on the fat. Why bother skimping on the fat in pastry? If you’re worried about fat, make fruit sherbet, not fruit pie.

Adding too much water to the dough. Start with the minimum amount of water that will hold the dough together and leave it workable.

* Most pie and tart crust recipes adapt fairly well to gluten-free treatments. For the best chance of success:

Choose a pastry with some fat and protein from chocolate, sour cream, cream cheese, or plain cheese.

Or choose a pastry that already has some gluten-free ingredients, such as cornmeal. - Choose a “pat-in” (rather than “roll-out”) pastry crust. It’s likely to work very well.

If a recipe calls for no egg, add some egg, even if you have to use half a beaten egg and figure out what to do with the other half. Replace 1 tbsp water with 1 tbsp egg. Whisk the egg with 1 tsp vinegar, too. If the recipe calls for an egg already, use a really big egg, reduce the water by 1 tbsp, and add the vinegar, too.

* Other options can always include using crushed gluten-free cookies (or a mix of cookies and gluten-free bread crumbs) in place of graham wafers. Add some chopped or ground nuts for more flavour and texture.